The passage of Frozen Moments
by lostiesgirl
Summary: An AU where Clara lost her memories instead of the Doctor, she decided on becoming a professor to shake the feeling of dissatisfaction with her life. But the Doctor couldn't stay away from her for too long. Written for BowserBabe on Tumblr, for the 2018 Doctor Who Secret Santa.


Happy holidays, guys, gals, and non-binary pals! It's been a very long year, and honestly I'm glad I've decided to do yet another prompt for Aietra's Doctor Who secret santa, over on Tumblr.

The prompts that I've used for BowserBabe will be revealed at the bottom of the story.

Enjoy!

* * *

Clara finished writing her name on the marker-friendly wall, taking an unnecessary deep breath. She swiped off some probably noticeable lint off her bright blue sweater she received from her gran for Christmas.

"Welcome all to this class, to start this off, for many of you," She gestured at the several students in the comfortably small classroom. "This is one of your first classes for this first step at St. Luke. I'mma let you in on a little secret, this is my first semester as well, and as my very first class, I just wanted to let you be privy to that fact, since hopefully 75 percent of you will not drop out by the end of this semester."

There was an cough that disturbed the silence in the room, Clara took that as a cue to continue. "Right," She looked back at her school computer, going to the website to take attendance. After two minutes, during which she managed to so much profanity and slang words, she was secretly grateful that she found the mistake. "Just to be sure, is there anyone going by the name 'The Doctor,'?"

"That would be me, ma'am." A grey-haired older man, in a black hoodie, moved his body into view. "And present."

Clara kept her head leveled. Maybe he went through a mid-life crisis and never looked back from Scotland, she mused as she went through the school supported syllabus, while making sure not to make a fool out of herself by acting out her external thoughts.

She wanted to say she felt different since the accident, because she was. When Clara eventually went back to teaching at Coal Hill, after the recovering period, she felt disconnected with each passing day. What didn't help is the people closest in her having no idea what was going on, or how she ended up being reported as dead, until the body that was identified as her turned out to be missing, and the paper work that detailed that being lost in paper storage mayhem. And so when after the third year of feeling dissatisfied, she decided to make the bright decision to leave her job, leave London, dye her hair sorta dirty blonde for a minute, and to try working at a university in Bristol, she had enough credits for it (somehow in those missing years, she gained a Masters).

* * *

Gathering up the extra syllabus papers for the people that weren't there, She turned off the computer, and finished packing up her supplies in her shoulder bag. Only The Doctor was there left. "Oh! Do you have any questions?"

"A few, you don't sound like you're from around here." The Scottish man said to the Blackpool accented woman.

"Takes one to know one," She pointently looked back at the Doctor. "Just looking at you, you totally look the professor part."

"I get that a lot, through the ages, magician is also a common one."

"Can't see it." Clara looked back at him. "This is a beginning class, I should know, I picked to do this semester for a reason."

"You have your reasons, I have mine's. I'm all for experimentation." With that he swiftly left the classroom, with a penguin-like walk to the open door.

"Oh, I'd bet you are."

* * *

Clara looked at the time on her laptop. She maybe had about three minutes tops to finish her lunch, if she had timed it just right before the Doctor came in.

She looked, she looked hard, ever against her better judgement. There was something tugging at her heart string when she heard his voice, every time they had their post class discussions. At the start, it was up to about 5 minutes, nowadays it was like they couldn't get enough of each other, intellectually. She enjoyed their cafe talks, far away from their university bubble.

He only had one class, hers. She couldn't look up the rest of the Doctor's file, wasn't able to access them, even with her special computer skills she had on the side, which was also another mystery to her, since she used to the type of girl where she had to ask everyone constantly for the wifi password.

"Knock knock," The Doctor said, in front of the doorway of her shared office.

"You didn't had to come in, you could have looked up your stuff online."

"I love the interpersonal relatability I get when I come to class, I expect the same thing here."

"Alright then, Doctor. There's no question, you're brilliant, I'm probably never going to have someone like you again. You've spoiled me for anyone else I will have in the future. You passed, your technical writing is off the charts, everything else is brilliant, except..."

"Except..." He moved to sit next to her.

"You've attended every class, had been the only one to follow me out the door, to my office hours. God, we even shared food together!"

"It's not a bad thing." He said in that soft tone that was usually reserved for their goodbyes.

"It was, now it's not." Clara took an unnecessary deep breath. "Do you have any other classes, next semester?"

He shook his head. "No, I'm done after this. Well, I'll still be around the area, had enough of Scottish people for one lifetime, me."

"Good, then..." 'Let me be brave, let me be brave, the worst he could say is a no, well, a couple things would be worse than a 'no',' It wasn't like she was a novice to dating, of course the not remembering bit does stymie ones chances at a relationship. ' it wouldn't be forward of me to ask you out, a proper date."

* * *

Rule One: The Doctor lies.

Or that's what he kept telling himself.

When he was occasionally checking up now and then on Earth, and occasionally, checking up on her, to see if she's doing alright, only to see that she was still yearning to move around, off to Bristol, he had to see for himself. He had a duty of care after all.

The second the class for English literature popped up with her name on it, he had to. It was getting harder through the decades. What he was content to do was go to class once a year, at the start, then by the time the first essay was supposed to be due, when she started to warm up to him, he couldn't help it.

Once a year became once a month, once a day...

It wouldn't hurt, would it? She made the first move after all.

The Doctor reached out to hold Clara's hand, tilting herself towards him. He glided his rough hand across her arm. "Clara Oswald, how _can_ I refuse you?"

* * *

It doesn't matter if she felt like a freak for not hearing her heart-beat. It doesn't matter that moments in her life have a noticeable gap ever since her friend Nina had passed away, all she wanted was to feel.

Their first kiss, after having had a wonderful dinner in the center of town, talking about the quality vs the quantity of 18th century poetry. It was magical, even when it started to rain by the time they were on their doorstep, and the Doctor leaned in with his damp face. She giggled into their kiss. He had her against the door, until Clara had to gently push him away and bid him goodnight.

She massaged her fingers, looking into her three-way mirror. Her hand started to wander down to her pulse point, a nightly ritual. Then stopped.

She felt the pulsing of his lips, in tune with her heart.

* * *

The prompts, which I've decided to combine from the initial prompt and a later prompt when I had asked, Bowserbabe, on anon, were:

2\. I would like a Twelve/Clara AU-ish fic where she's the one that forgets in Hell Bent instead of him. Because I think his original plan would have gone horribly and he wouldn't have been able to give her up.

the later prompt:

2\. Clara forgets instead of Twelve. That was his original plan. I have absolutely no idea how he thought that was going to work, because it sounds literally terrible. He's the one that spent forever to get her back, but he was going to be able to let her go just because she lost her memories? Sure, Jan. In terms of Jenna leaving the show, Twelve forgetting makes sense because it means Clara could go off and do her own thing, but I would love to see what could/would have happened if his original plan had worked instead. I feel like this is an obvious "what if" sort of thing to write fanfic about, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone do it? Also I have no idea how Clara was going to go back to a normal life? She's not alive, and on top of that everyone thinks she's dead, so… what exactly was she going to do? I MUST KNOW.

3\. If you ask me if I like AUs I will tell you no about 95% of the time (not including the soulmate thing) buuuuut there's one thing I would like to see that I never seem to see. There are teacher/student AUs all over the Twelve/Clara section of AO3 and as far as I know, Clara's the student in every single one of them. Like, I know that's the thing, older guy, younger girl, etc etc, but Clara is literally a teacher. If she was a college professor instead of high school, she could easily have someone older than her in her class. Gone back to school for whatever reason. And Twelve… he's practically the definition of a disruptive influence. I'm fine if it's just a straight AU, but the world of Doctor Who is such that sometimes you can sneak AUs into the normal universe. Or it could be AU like an alternate way that he met her. But Twelve instead of Eleven.


End file.
